How Kay manages a masterful timeskip

The first chapter of River of Stars' fourth part is further proof that this book could've be five separate books. As with the previous shifts between parts there's been a timeskip.

After reading about the emperor's okaying the move to retake Kitai's old lands, we're dropped into the middle of the struggle. A half year in, things (and the barbarian Altai) are quickly heading south.

Though what lead to this turn of events could fill a separate book, this timeskip works.

Throughout River of Stars the narrator is much more of a storyteller than I'm used to. In A Song of Ice and Fire for example, the narrator is primarily a mediator between George R.R. Martin's characters and the reader.

Kay, on the other hand, uses a narrative style that reminds me of the tone of the game over or game end text in an Ogre Battle game. Every time the narrator takes over from dialogue or description we're treated to a quick overview of events.

Yet, these overviews don't come across as oversimplifications of cause and effect or quick and dirty explanations. Each one reads as though it were carefully crafted and worded. Thus, this latest time jump works quite well. Kay gives enough detail to fire the imagination, but not nearly enough to overwhelm.

Of course, I'd expect nothing less from the writer of the line "The smell was bad with entrails spilling" (409). Short, precise, and vivid, that line would be right at home in Beowulf.

Ideas spurred by nationalism

Kohn's numerical sub-headings are great milestones along the path of his arguments and examples, but naming them would've made them more helpful. As he gets further into the place of nationalism in the Renaissance and Reformation, each of these subsections focuses on a different nation. So far transitional conclusions and descriptive introductions have made each subject clear, but replacing the numbers with names would make for a smoother reading experience.

Not that Kohn's writing is anything but smooth. Although most of this chapter has been summaries of what happened in the regions of Europe that would later become its major nations, the book still reads like a reported story rather than an enumeration of events with causes and effects clearly outlined. It makes for some entertaining reading.

It's also the sort of stuff that further fuels my other projects.

For the Beowulf project Kohn keeps mentioning the conditions in which nationalism thrives and the elements that constitute it. Kohn also seems to have overlooked the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a piece of writing in a mundane language specifically designed to unify a disparate people. I know that this function of the Chronicle has been written on before, but being reminded of it in this capacity has given me another piece of evidence to argue that the early medieval Anglo-Saxons were actually trying to create a national unity. A unity that consumed what was left of the British Celts.

On the less academic side, reading about Castile being isolated within its mountains got me wondering about world building through storytelling. Specifically if it could be possible to achieve the effect of a gradually widening world found in the great RPGs in a series of books.

The big question I'm left with is which one of these matters will be the first to prove useful.

Lay Away Book Special: The character building Beowulf entry

Thursday's reflection that if she's not married in the next five years she'll probably spend the rest of her life alone is a striking thing. Not because it's outlandish or strange or out of place in any book,  but because it's exactly what much of my writing's missing: Character exposition for the sake of character exposition. Her thinking about her relationships kind of relates to her subplot with Landen, but that plot itself is secondary to the hunt for Acheron.

In the context of reading Infinite Jest, this moment of character building also stands out. Infinite Jest is, if nothing else, almost entirely character development with only the slightest whiffs of plot until the books final 200 pages or so (as I've heard it told). Thus, for all of its typical English-ness and standard style, The Eyre Affair beats a nice middle path between writing that's almost entirely plot driven, and writing that's almost entirely character driven.

As the 2/3 mark is hit, the action in The Eyre Affair's definitely heating up. Though, once again I really wish Beowulf would be given a fair shake.

After Mycroft burns the original Chuzzlewit manuscript, Acheron just moves onto another. His go to is Shakespeare, but since no original manuscripts exist he defaults back to 19th century works. Because in English literature there's the Bard and the Victorians. That's it. Everything in between and before isn't worth the vellum/paper it's written/printed on.

You wouldn't even need to go back as far as Beowulf, you could go with Chaucer. The Beowulf manuscript might not be an original, and neither may the surviving Chaucer manuscripts, but that mystery would only add to the suspense.

Or, hey, since they're both works that are over 500 years old, why not just speculate and say "yeah, that Beowulf/Canterbury Tales (use as desired) manuscript is the original"?

Lay Away Book Special: The Acheron Moves Quickly

Well, Jasper Fforde definitely does not disappoint. After introducing Acheron Hades and his mysterious powers, he jumps full on into the weird and wild. Though, it looks like it may be a chapter or two more before Thursday Next, the main character, catches on to just what the weirdness around her and around Acheron is.

Fforde also continues to use Victorian lit as a touchstone for the sort of writing people would form serious political factions around (as well as Shakespeare). Such use of Victorian literature is a pet peeve of mine, but given that this is the first book in the Thursday Next series, it would be perhaps too bold of Fforde to jump right into a Chaucer or Beowulf manuscript. I'm sure one or the other comes up in a later book - or at least that is my hope.

The Victorians may have written a few good things, but too many people admire the flower while forgetting the stem and the root. Neither may be as pretty as the blossom, but of all the parts of the edible flowering plant that is literature, the root and the stem are much more complex and nutritious.

Book Swap Special: Blackwell for Beowulf

One of the guys I work with at my day job is seriously into martial arts. So, when he found out that I've had some fencing experience, he became very interested in my helping him out. Part of this help involves me piecing together a few mysteries of technique (and maybe theory) to be found in Henry Blackwell's The English Fencing-Master (or, the compleat tuterour of the small sword...In a dialogue between master and scholar. Adorned with several curious postures.).

However, before I could just grab a copy from Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), he brought the book in. Knowing about his interest in medieval epic poetry, I brought in one of my copies of Beowulf, and we traded texts.

Having read the first five lessons of Blackwell's book, it's safe to say that my rather casual fencing training wasn't for naught. The talk of Flankanade and Segoone is unfamiliar to me (not to mention the idea of thrusting with the nails down as in a Tierce), but the rest of it adds up.

Along with having a teacher who was more interested in the athletics side of the art (he trained a member of the 2012 Canadian Olympic fencing team, after all), it seems that he was also some 50 years too early for Blackwell to be of perfect relation. Riposte and "Holy Cross" (for the squaring of your upper body) have yet to come up.